Christmas has come and gone and with it a very happy Holiday Orchestra course. The next course will be in the Easter holidays, 9th to 12th of April, at the Perse School, Hills Road. Full information will be available around half-term.

Our plans are now ready for the 2018 Christmas Course which we hope will be as exciting as always. We have had to be somewhat creative with the timetable so please take the time to familiarise yourself with the solution we have found!

Avoiding Christmas, Boxing Day, Sunday morning and the evening of New Year’s Eve, while needing four days for the course, we have decided to go for three whole days (Thursday 27th, Friday 28th, Saturday 29th) and two half days (late Sunday 30th and early Monday 31st). All sections will run for the first three days, then only the ‘lower’ sections will rehearse and give their presentations on the Sunday and only the ‘upper’ sections will do theirs on the Monday. Some children, of course, will be in both types of sections and will therefore be needed on both half days but many will not. Everyone will have the full Holiday Orchestra experience!

Other aspects of the timetable include a lunchtime presentation by the jazz groups on the Saturday and our AGM, also on the Saturday at 11 am in the foyer. All parents and carers are most welcome. We would like to hear your views, questions and suggestions.

Some points to note from the Summer Course are: the need for instrument cases to be named (someone always takes the wrong one home); and a reminder not to overestimate your child’s current level of expertise. Children feel very discouraged if the music is too difficult for them but the tutors have to choose music according to the standard stated on the booking form. So please do check these standards.

On a lighter (or deeper) note, we are offering a tuba taster session for the first time. What an instrument! If you want to learn the basics of Tubby the Tuba book early, there are only 10 places. For folk music, we are sad to say that our wonderfully versatile Iain Mann has moved to Edinburgh but we are delighted to have found Holly Cook who will bring a fresh approach to our folk music sessions. Her offer of ‘Folk Around the World’ sounds really exciting to anyone interested in world music.

Christmas Holiday Orchestra is always great fun and a refreshing way to fill the gap between Christmas and New Year. With David Minchin as Course Director, we are sure it will be as musical as ever. Hoping very much therefore to see you at the West Road Concert Hall between Thursday 27th and Monday 31st December,
Yours,
Lydia Hill,
Chairman, Cambridgeshire Holiday Orchestra

Holiday Orchestra is now resting after a successful summer course in a new venue. West Road was being refurbished so we took ourselves off to The Perse School’s beautiful new Performing Arts Centre where we were made very welcome. Our next course will be at West Road, December 27th to 31st, and information and booking forms will be available (and emailed out) around half-term.

We are now ready with details of our 2018 Summer Course which we are sure will be exciting, friendly and musically rewarding for all concerned.

The first thing to note is that the West Road Concert Hall is undergoing refurbishment and so we have moved to The Perse Upper School in Hills Road (CB2 8QF). They have recently built themselves a new Performing Arts Centre and Holiday Orchestra will be taking it over for the duration of this course. It is a lovely venue with some excellent spaces and a large outdoor area for sunny breaks, but we have had to rethink some of our procedures. In particular, the seating in the Hall is less than at West Road, which in itself is barely adequate for the presentations, so we have decided to have three presentations instead of two and to divide the performing groups between them so that all families will be able to enjoy their children’s performances. The first two presentations will be on the fourth day and we shall decide the best way to distribute the groups when we know numbers of children and families.

Traffic, transport and trains being what they are, we would like to encourage car sharing without falling foul of the GDPR! We can put a list on the notice board at the course for people to register any interest. As for the Course itself, we have all our best summer offerings including four choirs, two jazz groups, Upper and Lower Orchestras, Grade 5 Theory, ukuleles, recorders, ocarinas, djembe drums and double basses! The stage at The Perse is not wide enough for the numbers who usually play in the Lower Orchestra which will have to be capped at 70, so we now also have ‘Pete’s Ukulele Jam’ (in a distant part of the building!) running at the same time to provide fun and creativity for some of the older children. Ukuleles are provided, but children may also bring their usual instruments. All this activity is centred, of course, on the bands and string groups at three levels each. The buzz, as always, will be tremendous. With Russell Keable as Course Director and many of our most experienced tutors, we know that Holiday Orchestra will continue its tradition of fun, community and excellence within an impressive new venue.

We hope to see you there from Tuesday 28 August to Saturday 1 September.

Hello everyone. Holiday Orchestra is now planning for the Summer Course. This will be at The Perse Upper School in their new Arts Centre and will run from August 28th to September 1st. Timetables and booking forms will be ready around the end of half-term – as soon as everything has been finalised. Wishing you a good summer and hoping to see you for a musical week at the end,

The days are getting shorter and winter is on its way but Holiday Orchestra is ready to see out 2017 with another brilliant festive course. When Christmas is over and New Year not yet arrived, we shall be making music and having fun at West Road Concert Hall. With David Minchin as Course Director, Steve Bingham as orchestral conductor/senior string tutor, and a fantastic line-up of tutors and activities, we are sure to have something to offer to every musical child and young person. From Percussion Games with Anthony Paul and Folk for Fun with Iain Mann, through strings, bands, choirs and many other sections all the way to Symphony Orchestra, there is a huge range of interests and expertise. The Orchestra will be playing Marquez Danzon no.2, which is a South American piece, made famous by the Simon Bolivar Orchestra from Venezuela.

This time, our taster instrument is the bassoon, the lowest of the woodwind and an instrument of great character. Be warned, we can only manage a group of 10, so please book very early and be prepared to be disappointed if we are already full.

One word: our Summer Course was long, busy and exciting, and we did have some problems with excited children. Our Child Behaviour Policy directs us to telephone parents if necessary, but we much prefer not to have to do so. Therefore, to avoid having any more monkeys balancing on the auditorium balconies, please would all parents and carers impress on their children that safety for all and consideration for others are of paramount importance. Holiday Orchestra adults are acting in loco parentis and must be listened to.

Meanwhile, choose an action-packed programme of music from around the world and join us at West Road Concert Hall from Wednesday 27th to Saturday 30th December. As our unofficial slogan says: “Make Music, Make Friends”.

Holiday Orchestra is now resting after a truly amazing Summer Course. Our project to invest the Suter Family Trust money, together with that from the winding-up of the Sine Nomine Choir, to commission a piece of music from Maurice Hodges for choir and orchestra and to present it at a Gala Concert was a big event for Holiday Orchestra but succeeded brilliantly. Many thanks to the donors, to Maurice and Thanea Hodges, Russell Keable, SmolOrch, and all the children. The collection for three children’s charities, as per Grade1athon, raised over £600. We shall soon be finalising arrangements for the Christmas Course, 27-30th December and we hope to see you there. Full details at the end of half-term week.

Due to the large numbers of bookings we have already received for all sessions, we regret that we cannot now accept any more bookings for our summer course. We apologise to anyone who has missed out this time, and hope to see you instead at our Christmas course beginning on 27th December. If you have submitted a booking in the last few days, we will contact you individually.

Hello to all Holiday Orchestra people and welcome to our Summer Course, 2017.

We have planned a huge range of music to please children and young people aged from 7 to 18. Our core activities, bands, string groups, choirs and orchestras, as always form the heart of the programme, with jazz, recorders, gamelan, ukuleles, djembe drumming, music games, music theory, brass workshop and double-bass tasting giving something for everyone to fill their time with music. The Music Theory section, given by the incomparable Kirsty Body, will, as last year, cover the basic subjects of the Grade 5 exam but cannot, in the time, do everything. The Course Director will be Russell Keable, and the dates are August 21st to 24th for the lower sections, plus the next day, the 25th, for the upper sections.

One very exciting development this year is our new commission. We are very grateful to have been given a considerable sum of money by Alison and Alan Suter, following the winding-up of the Suter Prize. The prize was endowed by their parents for Cambridge Youth Music’s annual Young Musician of the Year, but this has recently become too difficult to administer. The Suter family has decided to entrust us with the use of this money and so we were delighted when Maurice Hodges agreed to write a piece for us, for the Upper Orchestra and the 10+ and 9+ choirs. The text chosen is Arthur O’Shaughnessy’s beautiful poem “Ode”, which starts “We are the music makers”.

The choirs will perform the piece in the piano version in the Upper Presentation on the afternoon of the last day, Friday 25th August, but the full orchestral premiere will take place that evening. We are planning an extra concert – a Gala Concert – at West Road, as a one-off special event for the premiere of ‘Music Makers’ and because Holiday Orchestra has a lot to be proud of and to enjoy. Together with Maurice’s song, we will have Brahms from the Orchestra, a selection from the 10+ choir and a return visit from ‘Smolorch’. Smolorch is a small orchestra put together by an enterprising bunch of sixth-formers (largely Holiday Orchestra related) who thrilled us last year with their lunch-time performance. We are grateful that, between exams and holidays, they have agreed to come and play for us again.

So it will be a fabulous evening, with time for a glass of something together afterwards and a retiring collection in aid of a suitable charity. Ticketing systems will be explained later. Parents of children in the 9+ choir may have already realised that those children will be needed in the afternoon and evening of the fifth day, contrary to our usual policy of trying not to tire them out too much. Every effort will be made to make that day easier for them and we are sure they will rise to the occasion!

Looking forward to seeing you for what promises to be a wonderful week in August.

After a whirlwind of an Easter Course with much happy music-making, Holiday Orchestra is now planning the Summer Course, August 21st – 25th. Lots of exciting things will be happening and members will be informed by e-mail when booking is about to commence. We expect this to be sometime in June. We look forward to seeing you in August, Cambridgeshire Holiday Orchestra.

We now have our Easter Course programme ready for booking, and we hope that you will want to join us. We are back at West Road with Russell Keable as our Course Director, so we can enjoy the facilities at West Road and can offer a wide range of musical possibilities.

Dan Ecclestone is bringing his keyboards, xylophones and glockenspiels for two sessions of cumulative music building under the title of Fireflies / Bright Lights for Keyboards and Percussion. No previous experience is required, only ears, eyes and fingers, but the electronic keyboards should give Holiday Orchestra pianists a chance to use their expertise.

We also have three Djembe drumming sessions with Kirsty Body and three Gamelan sessions with Robert Campion. Of course there are string groups, bands and choirs at every level, plus recorders and ukuleles, all giving the children four days of making music and making friends, with two brilliant presentations at the end. Our aim is for children to experience the thrill of making music together. We hope you will find our programme irresistible, and we look forward to seeing you at West Road from April 10th to 13th.

We are now proud to announce our Easter 2018 course which will run from Tuesday 10th to Friday 13th April, with Russell Keable as Course Director. We are once again grateful to The Leys School for the use of their Performing Arts Centre, with its lovely spaces and helpful staff.

As always at Easter, the programme for the first three days is for the mornings only, ending at 1.20pm. The afternoon of the fourth day is devoted to the children’s presentations. There is no full orchestra because we find that the older children, facing exams, cannot spare the time for Holiday Orchestra. This gives a different feel to the Easter courses, very much benefitting the younger children (while not forgetting Upper Strings, Upper Band and the 10+ choir).

Holiday Orchestra always tries to combine excellence in music with fun and self-expression: we have a lot of that on offer at this course. Kirsty Body will be teaching her groovy glockenspiels in “Glock ‘n Roll”, followed by “Move and Sing!!”, which promises to be a lively amalgamation of song, dance and action for children of all ages. Also, Agi Peach’s “Rhythm Explosion” will include percussion instruments and group composition as never before. Altogether, it will be an exciting and energetic course, so sign up quickly before all places are filled!

Making music together is a wonderful thing and does so much good in the world, so come and sing, play, beat drums and have a really good time before school starts again.

We’ll see you at The Leys in April, when the weather will be kind and the children will be able to go outside in their breaks.

Our Christmas 2017 Holiday Orchestra is now underway. If you need to contact the reception desk during course hours this week, call 07930 930049. (Please note that this phone is switched off for the other 352 days of the year.)

Tickets for the presentations on Saturday afternoon are available for collection from the foyer.

We would also like to thank our sponsors, the ACE foundation, for their continued sponsorship of the course. You may wish to look at some of their upcoming concerts at the Stapleford Granary.